Author
Cody Sharp
At the turn of the new century (2000), people used things called PC’s, keyboards and mice. Now we use iPad’s and smart phones. The need for desktop computers is going away entirely. After all, no one needs to save files on their hardware anymore. It’s about cloud computing. Hell, we don’t even need a removable drive like an SD card. We can simply send the information by email or upload it to some online server. But what if you don’t want to share your information online or make it accessible to large corporations? Sorry, you’re out of luck.
In fact, getting information onto anything “real” can be quite a challenge these days. Try printing off something from your iPad or iPhone onto an actual piece of paper. Sure, there is an app for that in the case of the iPhone but you would think something as historically important as printing would have built-in support. This should especially be true of a device like the iPad where it supposedly can be used by children and businesses. I’m not asking for a parallel port or a floppy disk, just legacy support for printing would be nice.
Mice and keyboards are also on the chopping block. How much longer until we have neither option? After all, voice activation and speech recognition has come a long way in the last few years. Maybe we are not there yet but it won’t be long until it is close to perfect. When that becomes the case, what will be the point of having a keyboard option on the latest and greatest iPad or iPhone? There won’t be one. Sure there may be an app for that but it won’t be supported by default. Thus people will move on to being even further away from working with their hands.
Maybe it’s silly to be so concerned with losing things I have grown up with on a PC like a keyboard, mouse, and even an external drive of some sort but I don’t care. I want the option and I feel like options are the only thing that we are losing with the newer devices that come out. At 27, maybe I’m too old for the current world of technology; one that decries any type of “hacking”, playing with, and manipulating of base hardware because it’s unnecessary. Those are the things I grew up with and they are slowly, but surely being siphoned away. It seems like a shame, but maybe that’s just the old man in me.